Farley: Bats can drive a homeowner ... well, batty

No, wait ... I don't mean I like bats in proximity to blondes, but that ... Never mind.

They're cool, though. Everything they do is interesting. You can't even catch your cat in your front yard, but a bat can pluck a mosquito out of the air. They're important pollinators, eat at least 75 tons of insects each summer in the Truckee Meadows, and let's debunk the myth that they'll get tangled in your hair. A bat can gulp a gnat on the wing. It isn't going to bumble into your hair unless you have gnats.

When I sit outside on summer evenings I watch for them, and the other day I scored a double: two, no bigger than playing cards, swooping like God's own aerobatic team to pick off moths by the porch light. After awhile, one of them whispered past my head, dodged around the chimney and slipped through the living room window, without a screen since the cat clawed it down trying to get at the bird feeder. It's like Animal Planet around here sometimes.

OK, now what? We've had quail in the house, and the biggest garter snake I ever saw. Once I opened a cabinet and startled a ground squirrel, which also startled me. Bats are new.

Plentiful, too: While I scanned the room for the intruder, his companion whuffled in. I was alerted by Panda the Watch Cat, who sprang from the couch to the bookcase, then to the curtains, setting both bats flitting around like dust motes.

The traditional indoor anti-bat weapon is a tennis racket, but I didn't want to kill anything. Their flight is so erratic I had no chance of snagging one by hand. I've pursued birds indoors until they wore out, but a bat flies miles hunting bugs. They had a cardiovascular advantage. They're delicately built, so I had to be gentle. In the field, biologists catch them with mist nets, but. ...

Hey: I had some cheesecloth in the pantry, left from a forgotten kid project. If I could toss that over them....

It took a few minutes to dig it out, and when I got back to the living room, there wasn't a bat in sight. Panda the Somnolent had lost interest, but seemed focused, so far as he is able, on a corner where the stone fireplace meets the ceiling. I looked. Both were there, eight feet up.

I can reach eight feet, but I can't do much up there. I dragged a chair over, sloooowly edged the net forward and — surprise! — trapped them against the stone. Carefully, I bundled them up, stepped off the chair and headed outside. On the lawn, I examined them briefly. Cool.

I remembered from somewhere that most bats can't take off from the ground, so I held the net up at arm's length. One bat dropped, spread its wings and bolted immediately. The other hung motionless. I jiggled the cheesecloth. C'mon, dude. Fly.

He seemed to pull himself together, then let go of the cheesecloth, got his bearings and lifted as if borne by an angel.